The Mirror Theater in NoHo’s Art District just opened Rachel Orlikoff’s Vodka & Eurydice, a character study of a chick coming home to roost. Orlikoff wrote, directed, and produced her full-length production, having first staged a reading over five years ago at her alma mater Occidental College. The hyphenate basked in the thrill of opening night in the tidy foray of The Mirror. Blue grass playing in the house greeted the audience into the charming black box theatre with seats upholstered in red, velvety fabric. In a snapshot of a small town with one foot in the grave, the big deal is the local bar Jimmy’s and the only practical item on one of the protagonist’s to-do list is getting new accouterments for his guitar.
Charles (Robert Weiner) has gotten on in the years and his physical condition aptly matches his weather worn chairs. His porch is home, and he spends his days downing unadulterated vodka, rolling tobacco, and playing music. When feeling lucky, he’s on his radio transmitter hoping to make contact with space shuttle Icarus, a sly Greek reference. Charles is one of those parents who is less than acceptable on paper, but fully aware of his shortcomings as a father. He’ll defend his daughter come innocuous raccoon or dirty, lecherous older men. The offstage character of the mother is a charity fundraising Catholic who decided to leave him for good years ago with daughter Abigail (Caity Engler) after a horrible accident. With an unrepentant drunk for a father and a mother who one character suggests sounds like “one helluva bitch,” she's is caught between two less than nurturing worlds.
Abby’s deadpan observation is the “giant town is one puss-filled parasite,” but, she stays because her subconscious defiantly seeks to confront the horrible memories she tries to escape. Her father can’t recall her age, what name she goes by (not “Abigail”), and she hates bananas. Alcohol has watered down his memory to the point that he doesn’t have the forethought to provide a place for his daughter to sleep other than the now rundown car he almost killed the both of them in. Charles is clearly out of touch with his kin and, outside of noting that cell phones have a speaker function, this old dog isn’t going to learn any new tricks.
A stationary set serves mainly as Charles’ makeshift home, as well as the alley behind the local bar Jimmy’s. A rusty saw, horse shoe, sheers, pick-axe lodged into a tree stump, etc, litter the stage. And his “#1 girl” Eurydice--his guitar--hangs from the wall. Ohio license plates lay about like remnants of an accident near a bumper flanked by tires with tufts of gestating tumbleweed peaking through--the car Charles almost killed himself in, along with his daughter Abby. It also serves symbolically as the visiting girl’s bed, and at one point later in the play, she makes herself so comfortable, she’s prepared to spend the rest of her life there until she gets some kind of sign from her father that he has one tiny string in his heart he plucks for her. It’s a static scenario where Abby is young enough to wait for some kind of reconciliation to smile upon her (i.e. imprudently asking the elderly man to go on a hike), while pointing out everything else he makes a priority but her. She’s at the crossroads of repeating her father’s mistakes or forging her own path.
Truth be told, Vodka is laced with plenty of clichés. There’s a black-eyed, passive-aggressive alcoholic domestic violence abusee; a degenerate with pedophilia-like tendencies (with ballsy references to the board game Candyland laying the ground work for the line, “[I’ve] always got a sucker for little Abby"; and a hick lothario full of thick hokum. Abby’s revisit to her childhood includes dialogue like, “You’re acting like an 8-year-old.” (Her response: “About time.”) The addition of a virtuous boyfriend is episodic, but it helps flesh out Abby’s plight to a slightly maudlin climax (“I tried to protect you.” “From what?” “Me.”). But, Orlikoff is never guilty of indulging the seemingly rudimentary nature of her subject matter more than is necessary.
She dumps all of the stereotypes in a bucket and cleans them off with a washboard, presenting them with a host of warm performances directed at a lazy, nuanced pace. Opening night jitters almost worked to the production’s advantage, as the ill-prepared Charles sees his daughter for the first time in years. Weiner captures the essence of a man with hundreds of thousands of miles on his engine, but it would be pleasant to see his Eurydice have more of a live existence, rather than just be discussed and piped secondhand through speakers. Engler’s wily readings of lines like, “I’m hungry, do you have any peas, dad?” are superb. And, fortunately, Vodka doesn’t water her down with too tidy of an ending. Engler settles into her character quite quickly, and supplies a percolating anxiety throughout; she almost gets to the emotional point she needs to with her Abby when it comes time for her catharsis. The baritone-voiced Michael Barrett plays his sex-on-a-stick/slightly-a-prick Josh with a seductive glow, lubricating even the lines that are a little too smooth for him with an unrelenting glint in his eye. James Weeks appears later in the script as the high-wasted sweet-natured Ryan. Len Smith offers an adept performance as bar owner Doyle. The play crackles with humor, especially when Sally (Jennifer Kenyon) takes the stage. “She’s a fucking television: Always needs to be watched,” and Orlikoff uses her wicked comedy judiciously, and quite effectively. As the locals are comfortable enough with their political incorrectness in front of their object of disparagement or behind their back, she'll speak freely about “little horns” popping out of heads or inquiring about the whereabouts of a character’s kippah. My laughter made me second-guess myself amidst a nonplussed audience that just wasn’t biting. The red-headed, rascally Kenyon handles her like a pro and makes me want to see more of her on the LA stage.
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| Director, writer, producer Rachel Orlikoff |
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